


take me apart

by Catsarecutebutaliens



Series: trauma blues [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Nightmares, Other, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, The Doctor is traumatized and also has too many issues, The Master (implied), Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships, i have no idea how to tag this, kind of?, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23769601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsarecutebutaliens/pseuds/Catsarecutebutaliens
Summary: With her mind still processing the happenings on Gallifrey, the Doctor is unable to find peace even in her sleep.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Series: trauma blues [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1712221
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	take me apart

**Author's Note:**

> Another addition to the trauma blues series, I hope you like it! I'm starting to edge more and more towards thoschei and I honestly really don't mind.

River was in her arms and the world was whole.

Soft hands ran over every inch of exposed skin, discovering a body still new to both of them, a face born from pain and exhaustion. Her touch burned, gently and quietly, and it reminded her she was alive, real. River's body was a comforting weight pressing her down into silk sheets, anchoring her to the present and freeing her chest enough to breathe without the pain of her most recent memories, if just for a few, stolen moments.

The Doctor's eyes were closed in bliss as the bubbling feeling spread from her heart throughout every cell, raising a welcomed haze around her mind to hold back the thoughts of pain and fury that kept her on edge.

It was always there, dancing on the far edges of her mind, coming closer and stepping back, toying with her and giving her hope that maybe the future was going to be better.

She let go, fell into River's lips, River's mumbled promises, River's embrace, and committed every brush of skin to her memory. 

Soft kisses were peppered along her jaw, lazily trailing down her neck while River was taking her time to discover this body as she had studied all the ones before. Contingently, lips made way to playful nips, wanting to mark, to claim, to protect. The Doctor could sense all the love her wife contained for her, and with her mind immersed in a lush fog of pleasure and ecstasy, she was able to forget her history just long enough to return it for the first time in decades.

Without conscious thought, the Doctor buried her hands in the cloud that was River's hair, pulling her back in to satisfy the buzzing on her lips. Time was gone and they seemed to go on forever, stretching throughout the universe, so deeply intertwined neither could tell where they started or ended.

River's voice was quiet against her ear, too low and unintelligible to pass through the daze, but she didn't need to hear the words to know what they contained.

A smile formed on her lips, the first in months, and laughter threatened to boil over until two words reached through the fog and grasped her throat with cold, dead hands.

_ Kill me _ .

It wasn't her voice, but even as the panic began to rise in her stomach and a terrible weight came crashing down onto her chest, she knew who it belonged to. She always recognized his voice, deep and rough and pulling at the memories buried beneath decades of pain and loss.

_ Kill me,  _ he whispered and the hands around her throat gradually closed into fists, taking her breath away. His touch was all over her body, setting her aflame with a different kind of fire and consuming the remembered comfort of River's touch until she felt like a burning corpse, her skin melting off her bones like wax.

She wanted to scream until her throat was raw and the hands all over her body gone, but no matter how desperately she tried to breathe, no air entered her lungs, and behind her sealed eyes, now in a grimace of pain and terror, blood-red sparks sprang to live, edging closer and closer to the center of her vision.

He held her face, cupped her cheeks and brushed his lips against her ear, skin cold and rotten, talking no louder than a breathless murmur:

_ Kill me, love, and become death. _

No air in her lungs, fire spreading across her body, the fog swallowing her thoughts until she could not do anything but listen.

_ Kill me, dear, and become me. _

-

His hands around her throat followed her to the indigo dark of her bedroom and prevented any noise from leaving her throat. The weight on her chest was gone and so was his voice, but she remembered the sharp edge of his words, feeling them cut open the still healing wounds from Gallifrey. 

She leaned forwards and dug the palms of her shaking hands into her eyes, trying to clear the fog in her brain and stop the rapid, almost painful beat of two hearts hammering in her chest. Time seemed to swim around her and the usual comfort of the dark had contorted into reaching figures.

River was gone, but it wasn't her memory or the longing for her that pained her the most, that turned this dream into a nightmare. He had hurt her time and time again, had killed and destroyed despite and  _ for _ her, leaving her with impossible choices to make. The thought of him invoked terror to rise in her chest and even now, the impressions of his dead hands on her skin continued to burn. Gallifrey died because of him and if it hadn't been for the tiny spark of hope deep in her hearts, she would have also been left to rot in its ashes.

The worst part of her nightmares wasn't his touch or his words or his mere, suffocating presence.

It was the simple, horrifying fact that she  _ missed _ him, and the Doctor didn't know how long she would be able to keep away from him. She was falling, deeper and deeper and further away from herself with every thought of him, and maybe someday, when the nightmares turned into dreams, she was finally going to let go and find peace in his arms.


End file.
